Skip to main content
Maison AV FR Book

The Spa Guide · Method notes

How this guide
is kept.

A few personal pages to tell where this notebook comes from, who keeps it, what it looks at, and what it refuses to do.

I · Why a guide

I worked seventeen years in what is called luxury spa — palaces on the French Riviera, five-star houses by the Mediterranean, and a few quieter places where they speak little and care well. I have seen, from inside, what happens in a treatment room — and I have seen, as a guest, what happens when you walk into a house you do not know, suitcase in hand, hoping you have not chosen wrong.

This guide was born of that double position. I wanted a place to say, without commerce, what I think of the houses I have lived through. An author's notebook, not a ranking. Not a peer review either. Just my eyes, my hands, and the rigour the treatment-room years taught me.

II · Who chooses

One voice keeps this guide: mine. Angélique V., practitioner, founder of Maison AV. I have no committee, no panel. I write what I have lived, in the first person, and I sign.

This bias has a cost: coverage is slow. A house enters the guide once I have visited it, received at least one treatment, and observed the full journey — welcome, changing rooms, treatment room, recovery. Often anonymously, sometimes on an announced visit. Always paying for the service.

III · The five stones

Each entry is graded on five pillars, which I call the five stones. A score out of ten per pillar, never aggregated into one number — I would rather one read the profile than a single score.

  • Welcome. The first fifteen minutes. How you are taken in hand, what is asked of you, what is offered, the tone they use.
  • Place. The architecture, the materials, the light, the acoustics. How the place holds you, or fails to.
  • Treatments. The technique, the gesture, the precision, the listening during the session. The only criterion where I let the practitioner in me speak.
  • Journey. The passage — changing rooms, hammam, pool, rest area. How you are led, without being pushed, and how you are then allowed to drift.
  • Art of living. What is offered around the treatment: teas, meals, reading, silence. The unexpected detail that stays.

These five stones do not say everything about a spa. But they say everything one can grade. The rest is told in the body of each entry.

IV · The seals

In addition to the five scores, each house receives one, two or three Maison AV seals. It is a symbolic distinction, separate from the scores, that says: this house is worth the journey.

One seal: a sound house, recommended. You go without worry, you leave content.

Two seals: a remarkable house. You return. You take it with you.

Three seals: a rare house. You cross a country to reach it. You speak of it years later.

The absence of a seal is not a judgement. A house may not yet have been visited, or it may have been visited and not, today, included. I never write about houses I dislike — there is already enough criticism in the world.

V · How a house enters the guide

Three steps, in that order:

First, I go. Anonymously or not. I pay for my stay. I take notes afterwards, never during. I let several days pass before writing — what remains is what counts.

Second, I write the entry. Five narrative sections, one per stone. A one-sentence signature. A quote I would keep in memory if I had to keep only one.

Third, I write to the house. I share the entry, and request written permission to publish it, along with use of official photographs if needed. Until that consent is granted, the entry stays offline. To date, no house has refused. Most correct factual details (opening season, treatment length) — never the tone.

VI · No commerce

This guide is free for the reader and free for the houses. There is no affiliate programme, no commission on bookings, no advertising partnership. The Book on the spa's website button on each entry points to the establishment's official site — no tracking parameter, no intermediary.

Maison AV lives off its at-home rituals, in La Ciotat and along the French coast. The guide is, in a way, the editorial extension of that practice: what I see when I visit, I bring back to my own treatment table.

VII · The photographs

Two sources, credited on each image:

Official photographs are provided by the houses themselves, with written permission. The credit names them or their photographer.

On-site photographs are my own. They are rare, never taken in a treatment room or where other guests might appear, always validated by the spa's management before publication.

No AI-generated image is used in this guide.

VIII · How the guide grows

The 2026 edition opens with European coverage. The scope will widen as visits accumulate — first the neighbouring countries, then the Mediterranean basin, then Asia, which holds a particular place in my practitioner's vocabulary.

Entries are updated when I return to a house, or when a significant change is brought to my attention (change of spa director, renovation, departure of the head practitioner). The date of last visit is shown on each entry.

An RSS feed announces new entries.

IX · Writing in

If you run a house of care and would like me to visit, write to guide@maisonangeliquev.com. I answer everyone — I do not promise a short-term visit. If you are a reader and disagree with an entry, the same address works: I learn from these returns.

Discover the houses